I had a handmade shop for four years and Ivar shelves were on two of the four walls of the store. Buying those shelves was the best idea I had about the whole handmade shop thing. When I had to close my store, those Ivar shelves came home with me. My mom had just moved in and we had TONS of stuff and NO SPACE. Cat Cottage is cute but small, add a thousand books, a hoarder mother and you have the perfect recipe for interior design disaster. Those shelves helped me to organize my patio a bit, and store a ton of useless stuff there. I know, useless stuff should be thrown or donated, but it wasn’t my stuff. I have no jurisdiction over my mom’s trash. 

Anyway, my mother has been here for seven years, and it’s been a time of reorganizing and rearranging our entire lives. Finding a rhythm that could fit both has been hard. We are two completely different people: I’m an early bird, and she is a night owl, I don’t watch a lot of tv, she can’t function if the tv isn’t turned on. 

And I hate when the tv is on, and nobody’s watching it.

I always worked a lot on this house. I painted the walls to keep everything looking fresh; made curtains and cushions and paid a lot of attention to details. My house was very cute and fun, and I was very proud of how it looked. 

But sharing a small space with someone who has an opposite lifestyle to yours is hard. Finding the time to work on the house was impossible. Cat Cottage has been renovated about 30 years ago, but it’s an ancient house and needs minor works here and there continuously. 

Long story short, it now looks like a real mess. When I look at photos from ten years ago, I hardly recognize it. And it hurts because I love this little house so much. The time for a deep restyling has come and there can’t be any excuses.

This renovation is going to be challenging because:

• a lot of furniture can’t be saved. It has to go. 
• I have very little money to spend. Like, very little. Like, almost no money 
• I have so many Ivar shelves! And Ivar shelves can become anything.  

The first thing that has to go is my closet. A few years ago, my house was flooded, and the water has severely damaged the closet. I could save it for a while, but now all the damage is back on the surface. It is crumbling down like a cookie, really. So I’m painting my shelves white, I’ll put a bar to hang clothes, and turn the first Ivar into a closet.

The thing I like about these shelves is all the different ways you can decorate and paint them. I am making mine white, but I plan to add cabinets and drawers soon, and those are going to have a fun color!

The Ivar series is by Ikea, naturally, and the combinations and the accessories are infinite. You can really have fun and let your imagination run wild with Ivar.

I’ll post updates soon. For now there isn’t much to see but I’m writing this down to hold myself accountable, because there is really no time to waste!